but now it is a foamy, brown mess of atlantic angry ocean, thanks to hurricane sandy. >> we did begin an orderly shutdown of the subway system at 9:00. >> there is a ship presently out at the mercy of the ocean, a ship with 17 people on board. >> sandy is forcing both campaigns and some boaters to make some changes. >> anything they need, we will be there. and we're going to cut through red tape. >> we are seeing a large number of fires caused by downed wires and electrical problems relating to outages. >> flooding on fdr drive on the east side. on the lower east side of manhattan we have seen flooding in a must be number of subway s as well, water pouring down. >> make no mistake about it, this was a devastating storm, maybe the worst we have ever experienced. >> hurricane sandy's impact on the united states has been devastating and heart breaking. and the response has been heroic and inspiring. >> so why was 2012 such a bad year for weather disasters? what can we expect in the new year? chad myers joins us to talk about this and we saw really quite impactful that hurricane sandy and